In forming packages, such as packages of snack foods, bag material in strip form is delivered to a former shoulder. The former shoulder reconfigures the strip material into a tubular configuration. The tubular bag material is longitudinally sealed along its overlapping longitudinal edges and delivered to a packaging machine. Product is delivered to the interior of the former shoulder so as to be located internally of the tubular bag material, with the packaging machine then transversely sealing and cutting the bag material to form bags of product.
Examples of the above discussed packaging machines and former shoulders are described in European Patent 0275181, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,622,032, 4,663,917, 7,159,376, 7,383,672, 4,753,336, 7,124,559, 7,415,809, 7,152,387, and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/946,153, 12/665,023, 13/421,596, 13/705,038 and 13/692,937.
A disadvantage of the above described former shoulders is that a large number of the former shoulders is required to accommodate bags of different sizes and bags of different configurations. For example a former shoulder is configured to suit a particular bag size. In addition, there is the configuration of the longitudinal edges of the tubular bag material that is configured to meet various bag needs. Different bags have different configurations which in turn require different formers.
A particular disadvantage of the above shoulders is that the manufacturer (supplier) of the shoulders needs to manufacture a wide variety of the shoulders in order to meet the varying needs of their clients. A still further disadvantage is that should a former that has been delivered required modification, then the modification can be attended to without replacing the former shoulder.